Wolfgang Schwanke wrote: About the wonders of electic trains.

Yes it is the American persepctive but you need to realize a little more
American perspective.

The distances here are just plain longer than what you are dealing with in
Europe. The straight line distance between Paris and Berlin ~450 miles. In
the US that would get you from New York to Detroit. To get to Los Angles
you'd have to go another 1900 miles. Which is further than the distance from
either the Northern tip of Denmark to the Southern end of Italy or from
Gibralter to the Polish border.

Would it be nice to have electric rail serving the majority of the US, hell
yes, but after WWII we decided a huge highway system would be the way to go
and it served us well and help make the US the worlds largest economy. But
trying to install an electric rail system now would be next to impossible.
It has become alost impossible to add to the interstate system we already
have.

And there is one big plus to highways over rail. We don't grind to a halt
every time a single union goes out on strike.